


Of Princesses and Pyxides Three

by Rubynye



Category: Fairy Tale of the Three Choices
Genre: F/M, Minoan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of the three choices or the three caskets (as seen in Bassanio's trial in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> among other places), here retold in Minoan Crete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Princesses and Pyxides Three

Once upon a time, a beautiful queen, the granddaughter of the Moon, ruled the largest kingdom of the Island in the Midst of the Green Sea. She had her grandmother's light in her face and her hair flowed like the waves of the sea, and she was as wise as she was beautiful, so her people were well content in her wide and flourishing kingdom.

However, this queen had only one child, and he was a son, tall and strong-shouldered, quiet and clear of thought; she was pleased with her son, and she raised him to be her general, but he needed a queen, and she knew she would not live forever. Besides, a man needs a wife, and his mother loved her son and sought to find him a worthy match who would bring him joy. So, she creased her fair wide brow, walking at night in her grandmother's light and thinking on it, until one night she thought of a plan, and smiled.

The queen sent out a call, among all the islands in the Green Sea, to all the kingdoms on the hilly fringe of lands to the north, summoning princesses who did not have thrones and were not betrothed or bound to try her riddle. One choice would send the princess home empty-handed; one choice would spill her blood to make the crops grow; one choice would marry her to the prince and make her heiress to the queen's great, rich kingdom.

Several princesses came, and chose unwisely; they went home in disgrace, or died beneath the noontime sun at the foot of a sacred oak. Three years passed, and the prince grew from youth to young man, and his mother wondered if she could find him his queen.

Then, one bright day in the middle of the Spring, three princesses arrived at the Queen's city, and a rainbow stretched across the bay as their ships sailed into the harbor. The Prince dressed himself after the manner of a Palace servant, in a striped loincloth, bronze arm-rings inlaid with faience and a neck-chain of spiral wire loops, and leading a group of servants went down to greet the princesses.

The First Princess was from a mainland citadel, tall and slender, with a waist like a palm tree and hair like a raven's wing. She wore a silver circlet and a haughty look, and when the Prince bowed to her she sniffed and said, "Could the Queen not send anyone of rank to greet us? I had been hoping to see my future husband, or at least some of his courtiers." She climbed into the waiting litter as if she were deigning to sit on the cushions, and ordered the bearers to carry her up to the Palace. She was so intent on flicking her fingers along the cushions and complaining about their thinness that she didn't notice the bearers' glance to the Prince, nor his small nod of command, before they set off with her to the Palace. Her servants and guards marched after her, daggers nakedly displayed, not speaking to the Palace servants even to greet them.

The Second Princess was from a wealthy trading island; she was as ripe as a pomegranate, and wore heavy kohl around her eyes and crushed coral on her lips. Even though the day was not strictly one of ritual she wore her breasts bare and rouged, and her young maids clustered around her, adjusting her clothes and her hair with every third step. When she saw the Prince she ran her eyes over him and the other young men, and she smiled widest at the tallest one. "I have been so very idle on shipboard, I look forward to finding company," she said, purring like a cat, as she walked through the midst of the men, turning her body against one and then the other. She lay back in her litter with a sigh and wriggled into the pillows; she was too concerned with stroking the shoulder of one of the bearers and murmuring in his ear to notice the bearers' glance to the Prince, nor did she wonder as they set out. Her maids trailed after, giggling and teasing the bearers and the servants from the Palace, whom they outnumbered.

The Third Princess stepped forward as the Prince and the remaining servants greeted her and bowed to her; she bowed to them, gracefully and graciously, bowing a little more deeply as she faced the Prince. She was from a small island known for its hospitality, with good harbors and little else, and as if to depict her island in the flesh she was small and rounded, with an intelligent brow and long curls dressed with beads and ribbons. "I thank you for our gracious welcome to your kingdom, and I await an audience with the Queen and the Prince," she said clearly, and smiled; behind her the modest group of attendants, two maids and three sturdy serving-men, bowed low and smiled as well. When she climbed into her litter she drew her curtains back so she could see where they were traveling, and looked out of the corner of her eye to see the Prince nod to the bearers. He walked up beside her litter, and she smiled at him and leaned down to talk softly.

"Who are you really?" she asked him, and he returned her smile. "You have clear eyes, my lady," he replied. "I think you already know."

She laughed a little at that and sat up, and in a clear voice asked him questions about the city and the land as they passed through the town on their way to the Palace.

 

 

On the appointed day, three days hence, the Third Princess stood in the small antechamber to the Throne Room; she carefully rubbed one eye, which itched from lack of sleep. The Second Princess stood beside her, yawning widely, leaning on two sleepy, twittering maids; the First Princess could be heard in the Throne Room pacing in circles, trying to make her decision. The night before, struck by sleeplessness, the Third Princess had wrapped herself in the embroidered woolen coverlet and walked the gypsum-paved halls of the Palace: past the First Princess' door, her mainland guards propped asleep against the walls outside it; past the Second Princess' door, leaking light and merry noise; past the wakeful Palace sentries, who quietly smiled and touched their foreheads to her, and out onto the second-floor terrace, a pool of moonlight.

The Third Princess glanced through a small gap in the curtains at the Prince, standing beside the Queen, dressed in a spectacularly patterned kilt, gold arm-rings and a collar of lapis as blue as the sea. As beautiful as he was now, the Third Princess had thought him even more handsome the night before, wearing only a simple cloak and the silver light, talking softly with his mother on the terrace. She had drawn back, but the Queen had smiled and beckoned her, and then glided away. The Prince had wished her all good fortune for the morning, and had looked as if he would say more; but he had gently touched her hair, twining one curl round a finger, and then abruptly turned away, wishing her a fair sleep as he vanished into the shadows. Now, in the morning sunshine, if called by her thoughts, the Prince turned his head just slightly, looking through the gap in the curtains, seemingly straight at the Third Princess, and her heart hurt with a sweet, confusing pain.

A scream slashed through the Third Princess's thoughts; it was the First Princess, screaming, "no, no no no no! I cannot be wrong!"

"You have chosen as you chose," said the Queen, softly and warmly and implacably. "You chose your fate."

The First Princess was still screaming, and bronze daggers were hissing from their scabbards. "My father will hear of this! He will have your head! He will plant it on a spike on his battlements!" She shouted to her guards, "Protect me!" at the same time as the Queen calmly added, "You swore, before the Mother, and upon your own head, to abide by the fate your choice brought you. You can at least meet it as a princess, not a harpy shrieking curses."

That quieted the First Princess, and quelled her guards. She strode out so heavily that the Third Princess could hear her footfalls though she was barefoot, but she went in regal silence, and the Third Princess could just envision that proud head held high one last time.

The Second Princess giggled. "And now I go to win!" she said to the Third Princess, who pretended not to hear, and to her maids, who tittered in agreement. She fidgeted while the Queen dismissed the First Princess' followers to take ship and return home, and when the Queen summoned her she all but skipped out to face the trial. The Third Princess, left alone in the antechamber, breathed deeply to compose herself and waited.

She did not have to wait long. The Second Princess cried out in dismay and disgust, "What foulness is this! How can I have chosen ill!" The Third Princess saw her fling herself upon the Prince, clinging to him as if she were naked, digging her fingernails into his flesh. "You must want me! You must desire me! I'm a beauty, all for you! You cannot send me away!

The Prince gently, firmly pried her hands from his arms and pushed her away. "You chose ill, my lady. You swore to accept the fate you chose. You must go now." The Second Princess crumpled at his feet, weeping noisily, and her maids rushed from the crowd to bear her away, the sound of her tears trailing behind her.

After a moment to calm the waiting crowd, the Queen summoned the Third Princess, who swallowed to still the butterfly of her soul, fluttering behind her navel, then walked out precisely and deliberately to face the trial, the silent crowd of people, the stern guards, the Prince and the Queen. "You remember, and agree," asked the Queen, the Prince beside her still as a carven statue, "that you swore to accept the fate you choose?"

"I do," said the Third Princess, and both the Queen and the Prince smiled.

"Then choose," said the Queen, and the Third Princess looked at her choices.

Three [pyxides](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyxis_%28pottery%29) sat before her, set into tripod stands. The first was made of gold with a lid of ivory, on which was etched in the script of the Islands, "She who chooses me shall find her future". The second was made of silver with a lid of beaten bronze, impressed with the words, "She who chooses me shall see her true nature." The third was simply potted from sturdy red clay, and on the clay lid in glossy black paint were the words, "She who chooses me shall fulfil her Fate."

The Third Princess considered these choices, trying to think only of them, trying not to think of her life, and the country, and the Prince, all hanging in the balance. What was the difference between these choices? Well, she thought, in the end, my future is to die. All women and all men must die. And when we die we return to the soil of the Earth, to the body of the Mother, to what we truly are. I can do nothing to change these, though I become a Queen; this Queen is seeking a wise wife for her son because she knows that one day she must die. I cannot control my destiny; it lies in the hand of Fate. All I can do is fight my fate or turn towards it. It is wiser to turn towards it.

So, she picked up the third pyxis, the one that spoke of Fate, and, not daring to look up at the Queen or at the Prince, she opened it.

The depths of the pyxis glittered in the light; the Third Princess reached in and drew out an intricate diadem, tiny silver stars inlaid with bits of precious stones and linked by delicate golden chains. The Third Princess stared at the beauty in her hands until the Queen reached towards it, to gently take it from her hands and arrange it upon her head; then she took the Third Princess' hand and laid it in her son's.

The Third Princess finally raised her eyes, to see the Prince smiling like a sunrise as he closed his hand tightly round hers. Her blood roared in her ears so that she barely heard the Queen say, "welcome, my daughter and heir," barely heard the crowd roar their assent. Then the Prince bent to kiss her, and for that moment she knew nothing else but him at all.

Then she breathed, and reminded herself she was a Princess; she turned to the crowd and bowed low, and they roared again even louder; all the while she clutched the Prince's hand, warm and tight round hers.

The Queen stepped forward to opened the other two pyxides, even before the princess thought to wonder and ask; the first one, the golden one, was full of dead men's brown bones, and the second one of silver was filled with dark earth, worms wriggling out over the bronzen script of the tilted lid. The Third Princess looked, and caught her breath; then she looked up at the Prince, and breathed again, beholding her fate.


End file.
